


i loved you

by bokutoma



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Anders Positive, Circle Mage Bethany Hawke, Dragon Age Quest: The Last Straw, F/M, Fenris is Bad at Feelings, Hawke & Varric Tethras Friendship, Parental Aveline Vallen, Parental Varric Tethras, Purple Hawke, Sided with Mages, Varric Tethras is a Good Friend, endgame spoilers obviously, god it hurts thanks, i mean idk if it's positive but it's not negative so i'm counting it, varric is a goodun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-19 20:23:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14245038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bokutoma/pseuds/bokutoma
Summary: one last conversation between anders and hawke. marian wonders why she wasn't enough.





	i loved you

**Author's Note:**

> i'm getting really, really emotional just thinking about writing this  
> playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/halcyosu/playlist/4wzjmC3RPyi2OXbuthdc8Q

Her worst fear realized. Anders, no longer the man she loved, but the truest form of the word abomination. There was nothing in him that she could see of her lover as he approached Meredith and Orsino, the damned fools.

"The Grand Cleric cannot help you," he said, and the memories came rushing into her head.  _Distract the Grand Cleric,_ he had said.  _It's for my cause._

But he had never been specific, had he? And now it was too late to do anything but watch in growing horror as realization dawned on her as to what, exactly, he meant.

Meredith, ever vigilant but so incredibly fucking  _blind,_ didn't understand the implications behind his words for a moment. "Explain yourself, mage!" she thundered, and as much as she disliked the woman, she could not help but understand where she came from. Elthina, for all her faults, was a good and kind woman. 

"I will not stand by and watch you treat all mages like criminals while those who would lead us bow to their Templar jailers!" At his lightning quick response, Hawke realized that something she had heard long ago but dismissed as jealousy still rang true.  _He will never choose you over his cause._

Amidst the storm, Orsino was icy calm. "How  _dare_ you speak to me?" he hissed, and any last hopes she had harbored for his safety fell by the wayside. 

"The Circle has failed us, Orsino!" And now his voice was two, and any last hopes she had harbored for his mind fell by the wayside as well. " _Even you should be able to see that."_ Justice's words were like flint to the tinderbox that was her heart. "The time has come to act. There could be no half measures."

Damn him, he looked upset. What right did he have to be upset when he had blackmailed and lied to her to do what he'd done? What right did he have to love her not as a person but as a means to an end? "Anders," she choked out, praying to whoever would listen that she still sounded strong, sounded like the Champion of Kirkwall should. "What have you done?"

He turned away from her, and she felt as though that was merely a confirmation of her worst fears. "There can be no turning back."

The ground vibrated beneath them, and Hawke only had time to exchange confused, horrified looks with Orsino and Meredith - how  _funny_ it was that this would be what united them - before several beams of red light erupted from the middle of the Chantry. The building fractured apart, individual stones flying out of formation and splintering off from the explosion center. They coiled together, a horrid snake of debris, as the statue of Andraste tumbled from its perch. It was almost beautiful, in a strange, obscene sort of way.

Then the pieces pulled together like an inhale, and on the next breath, they exploded out over the city.

"Maker have mercy," Meredith whispered, her voice more like a prayer than Hawke had thought possible from her. 

Anders stepped up beside her, fingers brushing along her own. They felt foreign, not the familiar ones that she had interlaced hers with many times. "There can be no peace," he said, and she could not stop her replying whisper.

"Because of you."

She watched with dismay as Sebastian collapsed to his knees, heartbroken. "Elthina, no!" he wailed. "Maker, no! She was your most faithful, your most beloved!"

Hawke began to pace toward him, to comfort him, to offer him an embrace that would have to serve substitute for now, but Anders stopped her with a hand around her wrist as the priest continued, sobbing, "Why didn't she listen to me?"

She watched, numb, unable to tug free despite her superior strength, as Sebastian rose unsteadily to his feet and began to chant a prayer, rocking back and forth fervently.

"Why?" Orsino asked as Anders let go. "Why would you do such a thing?"

He drew up his shoulders the way she had always been so proud of, the way he got when he took a stand and did something for himself. "I removed the chance of compromise," he said, and it broke her heart to see how much he believed in what he was saying. How much of this, of him, was Justice, or Vengeance? "Because there is no compromise."

"A Grand Cleric has been slain by  _magic,_  the Chantry destroyed,"Meredith snarled, spitting out the word like it was the most vulgar she knew. "As Knight-Commander of Kirkwall, I hereby invoke the Right of Annulment! Every mage in the Circle is to be executed  _immediately._ "

 _Oh Anders,_ she thought as he recoiled with shock.  _What did you think was going to happen?_

"The Circle didn't even do this!" Orsino cried, and with a sinking feeling, all Hawke could think was  _Bethany, Bethany, Bethany,_ playing in her mind on loop. "Champion, you can't let her! Help us stop this madness!"

Too much. Everyone wanted too damn  _much,_ and all she wanted to do was retreat behind her facade of careless humor, but try as she might, it was no longer there. Meredith's answering demands rang in her ears hollowly, the words no longer connecting to meaning as everything fell apart. Distantly, she groped behind her, desperate for Aveline, for the one person who hadn't abandoned her since Lothering fell to the Blight.

There was no answering hand.

"Why are we debating the Right of Annulment when the monster who did this is right here?" Sebastian spat, and, for once, she found herself on the prince's side in the tension between her lover and the Starkhaven native. "I swear to you,  _I will kill him._ "

He had every right. Every fiber of her morals screamed for her to plunge the knife into his back herself.

Her heart still screamed for a way to give him redemption.

She talked on autopilot, debated with Orsino and Meredith and a man she no longer knew, found herself siding with Orsino because the only thing she had left in this world was Bethany. Fenris turned on her, Aveline questioned, but she did not waver. 

She could not afford to waver. She was Kirkwall's Champion.

Everyone was gone, but for her friends and her lover, as he sat awaiting his sentence by her hand. She went through the motions, questioning like she should, like an interrogation and not a personal betrayal. She asked her friends' opinions, desperate to hear a way out, but when Sebastian threatened to leave, she crumbled. She couldn't lose another person for the sake of someone already far beyond her reach.

"Why?" she muttered, crumbling to the ground behind him. She heard Merrill's gasp of surprise, heard someone, likely Varric, hold her back from rushing over. "Why could you not trust me? Why could I not be enough? Why could you only love me when I followed your whim and manipulate me when I just wanted to know what was going on?" She gasped, her head falling into her hands as Kirkwall crumbled around her. "We could have done this together, found a way to spare life and still send a message, but instead you lied and betrayed me."

"Whatever you do, just do it," he said, and there was nothing of a man who loved her anywhere in him.

"I have to kill you," she sobbed, one hand pulling at her hair in grief even as the other automatically reached for a dagger. 

"I understand," he said. 

She heard pacing, and Sebastian came to crouch beside her, one hand resting on her back. "You're making the right decision, Hawke," he said. "But I cannot fault you if you cannot take the final step. Let me do it, so your heart can remain clean."

She leaned into his touch briefly, ached for the comfort it offered, but drew herself up unsteadily. "It's the last thing I'll ever do for him," she declared, but still found herself looking at him, lost, in need of reassurance. He nodded, offered her the dagger from where she had unknowingly dropped it.

She approached him, steps dragging along the ground. He was entirely still, awaiting his fate. She pressed a kiss against the back of his neck. He did not stir.

"I loved you," she whispered, then let the dagger plunge into his back as Kirkwall screamed of revolution.

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact, in my og playthrough, i kept waffling between friendship and rivalry w fenris, so he abandoned me when i chose to side with the mages only to rejoin me later  
> i thought i had lost him and almost died sdjgerhger
> 
> i cried very hard writing this


End file.
